The league's national director, Abraham Foxman, called for a full investigation and asked Japan's government ” to carefully consider if this act of disrespect for the memory of the millions of Jewish victims who lost their lives in the Holocaust requires a new look at educational initiatives regarding the Holocaust and anti-Semitism.”

He said that while there has been some history of “journalistic and literary anti-Semitism in Japan, these kinds of incidents are in fact quite rare.”

In the Nakano district libraries, the vandals apparently damaged the books while unnoticed inside reading rooms, according to city official Mitsujiro Ikeda.

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“Books related to Ms. Anne Frank are clearly targeted, and it's happening across Tokyo,” he said Friday. “It's outrageous.”

At another library, all the books that were damaged could have been found using the keywords “Anne Frank” in an online database.

At least one library has moved Anne Frank-related books behind the counter for protection, though they can still be checked out.

Anne Frank wrote her diary over the two years she and her family hid in a concealed apartment in Nazi-occupied Netherlands during World War II. After her family was betrayed and deported, she died in a German concentration camp at age 15 in 1945.

Her father survived and published her diary, which has become the most widely read document to emerge from the Holocaust.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center, a U.S.-based Jewish human rights organization, issued a statement calling the vandalism a hate campaign and urging authorities to step up efforts to find those responsible.

Not all kids who play baseball are uniformed with fancy script across their chests, traveling to $1,000 instructional camps and drilled how to properly hit the cut-off man. Some kids just play to play.

About this series

"Stepping Toward Hope" chronicles in four parts the efforts of remarkable patients suffering spinal-cord injuries to take advantage of new science and locomotor therapy that may allow them to walk again. Intense struggles, aching despair and remarkable effort are all part of their grueling stories explored by health reporter Michael Booth and photographers Craig Walker, AAron Ontiveroz and R.J. Sangosti.

Here's a look at each day's story:

Day 1: James Nall fell down his Arvada stairs and into a world of setbacks and victories far different from his former type-A life as a restaurant manager.

Day 2: Locomotor treatment is helping people with spinal-cord injuries improve their mobility and lifestyles. Amanda Boxtel, directs her own therapy using an exoskeleton for mobility.

Day 3: Mackenzie Gorden strove mightily at Craig Hospital to regain some of her former life as a cheerleader and dancer, but faced new challenges back home in rural Iowa.

Day 4: The future is pouring in now for paralysis patients as robots, computer interfaces and smart controls change lives. But the hard daily work of people like Kyle Pearson and Jo Donlin involves quieter aspirations.